A hospital bed has a base with castors on it so that it can be moved about and is often used in hospitals to move patients from place to place requiring hospital personnel to manually maneuver the hospital bed. A single care provider should be able to manually maneuver the hospital bed, and preferably the bed should be maneuverable from the head end or the foot end in order to facilitate easy transportation within the relatively narrow hallways of some hospitals. It is common for a care provider to be at the head end of a hospital bed; however, this also raises a problem with respect to the positioning of a handle at the head end of a hospital bed. The problem is that when the hospital bed is stationary, a nurse or care provider administering to the patient needs full access to the patient without the obstruction of a handle or other mechanism.
Hospital beds typically have collapsible patient side guards which can be provided on the lateral sides of the hospital bed toward the foot end or head end of the patient as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,077,843; 5,054,141; and 4,985,946 each assigned to the assignee of the present invention. A care provider at the end of the bed can lean forward and hold onto the patient side guards using them to maneuver the bed. However, maneuvering the hospital bed from the end of the bed while grasping the side guards requires leaning over the patient in a manner which is cumbersome and uncomfortable for both the care provider and the patient situated on the bed.
To avoid leaning over the patient to maneuver the hospital bed, it is common to grasp a bed frame which is connected to the hospital bed base and supports a mattress. However, a firm grasp on the bed frame at the head end or lateral side of the hospital bed is often difficult to achieve because a suitable bar or grip is often, at the least, not accessible, or worse yet, absent. Another approach to maneuver a hospital bed is to grasp a piece of auxiliary equipment for support which is provided on the bed for diagnostic procedures and examinations such as a monitor or intravenous mechanism. However, such auxiliary supporting apparatus is typically inadequate to withstand the forces required to maneuver and control a full size hospital bed with a patient situated thereon.
A prior solution to these problems is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,069,465 which has push handles for maneuvering a hospital stretcher. The stretcher has at one end two L-shaped handles which are each supported at an outer end of one of the two legs of the handle by an extension. The extension on each handle is pinned to the stretcher and when the handles are lifted into position for maneuvering the stretcher a sleeve slides to cover the extension at the point it is pin mounted to the stretcher. Once the sleeve slides to cover the extension the handle is secured for maneuvering the stretcher.
This sliding sleeve mechanism as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,069,465 is subject to criticism, however. The mechanism by its nature creates undesirable play or "slop" thus yielding an insecure feel when maneuvering the bed. In addition, the sliding mechanism is difficult to properly clean and disinfect, causing the rather substantial sliding surfaces of the mechanism to be a potential source of contamination and infection. Finally, the sliding mechanism is subject to failure due to the wear upon the mating sliding surfaces.